BA (Hons) Busking October 1, 2005
Posted by Andy Roberts in : learning , trackbackYear Three of Ultraversity’s ground breaking online degree consists of an Action Research project devised by the student based on our own circumstances.
Working Title: Busking for improvement
Context:
It’s two months since my short term contract at Marsdon School wasn’t renewed, and there’s no sign of any fees coming in from my new IT consultancy business yet, so in desperate need of a bit of liquidity, the clock turns back thirty years: I picked up my old guitar and headed down town to work as an itenerant street singer (busker)
The Problem:
Busking in London is hard work so: how can I increase revenue and play less hours while still paying the bills?
Action:
I will make a series of busking expeditions each of a fixed time, trying out different techniques which I think might increase the takings. Based on an assumption that I perform best when I’m enjoying the songs I will also record how I’m feeling about the session every 10 minutes or 3 songs (qualitative) as well as counting the money, both in total and as sets of different denomination coins. (quantitative)
Participation:
In a further cycle of the enquiry I will employ the services of an assistant whose job is to hold the hat and collect the money (a bottler). The bottler will be invited to make suggestions for further cycles and we may make joint decisions on the fly about the playlist according to which songs appear to be going down well (emergent action). With adequate assistance it may be possible to collect video data as well. By convention, the takings will be split 50/50.
Audience:
The exhibition will be presented live to a populous but frequently changing audience of strangers, so I will need to have good mechanisms in place for collecting feedback data from a small self-selected volunteer sample of people who are willing to stop and leave comments.
Literature Review:
None, because “writing about music is like dancing about architecture” (Zappa, 1974)
Potential for further cycles.
Plenty. For example the location could be changed to Paris (via Eurostar) or the entire music element could be dropped and replaced with an empty vodka bottle and a dog on a piece of string to see if takings go up or down.
Ethics:
In consideration for audience sensitivities there will be no Simon and Garfunkel.
Tachnorati Tags:
ultraversity,
busking, actionresearch,
music
is an online professional who initiated DARnet 
http://home.pacifier.com/~ascott/they/tamildaa.htm
Not so sure it was Zappa… Do you have a more definitive piece of information to back up your sources?
What could be more definitive than
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Frank_Zappa
“If people stop copying my music, I should start to worry.”
I liked this guy’s advice about busking
http://www.stiffarmingsociety.com/busking/busking.htm
It would seem you need to tranform into a lady (somehow) to make more dosh busking.
Thanks for the link Graeme. I think a male/female combination of busker and bottler works well, but the fingerpicking acoustic style is never going to be loud enough without amplication, and I’d like to try and avoid lugging all that equiment up and down the escalators so I’ll start off using a plectrum. Yeah, I’d disagree with standing up being the third option too. You gotta stand up to get noticed and to get the lungs working at full capacity. Standing up and wearing a bright coloured hat might help too.
Nice Blog - will link in!
Nice try Andy. I feel there are far too many variables to make a scientific study though,- choice of pitch, weather, etc. etc.
Also, I’m not convinced an acoustic busker can make enough to live on these days….I recommend that you invest in a portable amp, mic and mike stand and a foldable trolley. Good luck!